You may have heard about the whole Laura Kate Dale situation coming out of the Eurogamer Expo today. She’s a gaming journalist who founded Indie Haven and contributes to Destructoid. Her Twitter profile is blowing up right now.

To summarize a situation you probably already read about: Dale was on stage during a Microsoft conference at the Eurogamer Expo. A comedian named Fraser Millward supposedly referred to Dale as “it” while on stage since she’s transgender. Dale took great offense to this and posted on Twitter about how humiliating it was. The entire situation has escalated out of control.

To his defense Millward is saying that he mistakenly referred to Dale as “this person” and he swears he never said “it” on stage. He claims a person in the audience laughed when he said “this person” and wishes that Dale hadn’t reacted on Twitter so quickly so he could have discussed the situation with her. He apologizes for letting the situation get out of hand.

At the time of this post there isn’t any video of the event so it is Dale’s word against Millward’s concerning whether he used the term “it” on stage. Perhaps Dale shouldn’t have gone straight to Twitter but she was upset and distraught. People do rash things in a situation like that just like how Millward was caught off guard by the audience reaction and didn’t take care of it before it got out of hand.

Let’s just say Dale over-reacted (and as of right now I don’t think she did) and was mistaken to lash out on Twitter. That doesn’t excuse the horrible behavior by countless people on her Twitter page. She’s getting even worse harassment online from hateful people.

I understand that people don’t like “unique” individuals taking offense to things like this. These hateful people believe she’s taking things too seriously and shouldn’t be offended. Well, now they have to taste their own medicine because their harassing tweets will be displayed across the web as the hateful acts of online bullying that they are.

Here are just a few of these offensive tweets that Dale re-tweeted herself that we got screen captures of before they inevitably get deleted.

I understand that as a small-time gaming site our opinion and stance on issues like this really won’t be viewed by many people. That said, I still feel like I should point out how terrible these comments are. Even if Dale is entirely wrong in the situation and made up every single thing she said, that doesn’t warrant this hate.

It is humiliating for the entire gaming industry to have vocal people like this. Like I said, even if Dale is 100% in the wrong somehow (I doubt it though she probably shouldn’t have taken to Twitter so quickly) these comments are still wrong.

A lot has been said about whether Kotaku has contributed to the hate Dale is receiving online. Some say them posting on it sent a lot of hateful people her way. I’d be fearful of doing the same thing but obviously Gimme Gimme Games isn’t anywhere near the level of Kotaku in terms of followers. Not even in the same galaxy though it would be great to get there someday. I’m posting about this because I can’t let it go unnoticed. It disturbs me that these hateful people also contribute to how the gaming industry is shaped.

An incredible amount of respect goes out to Dale for putting up with this and I sincerely wish her the best in over-coming this entire ordeal. It isn’t going to be easy at all. Hopefully Millward, Microsoft, Eurogamer and Dale can come together to clarify that this entire situation is resolved among the parties involved soon. This type of behavior is embarrassing for the entire gaming industry and doesn’t help the industry be taken anymore seriously by those outside of it.

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About The Author

I am the editor-in-chief of the entire site and also the editor of the Nintendo news sections on 3DS/DS, Wii and Wii U. I founded Gimme Gimme Games in 2010 and its been growing ever since. Each day it gets bigger and I have all of you to thank for that. I don't know where it will end up but I'm excited to see what happens.